


Stressed Out

by diedandwenttonightvale



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: CSP, Dermatillomania, Dissociation, Gen, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Harm, Skin picking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 05:18:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3965857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diedandwenttonightvale/pseuds/diedandwenttonightvale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started around the sore edges of his arm, the parts that were chafed raw by the metal (he was proud that he could hazily remember this, as silly as it seemed), but by the time he had moved in with Steve, it had moved to his face and back. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t often; once a day for about half an hour, he’d pick at his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stressed Out

Bucky didn’t notice it until Steve pointed it out.

“Buck?” Steve asked in that unsure way he used when something not-Bucky was happening. “Do you…?” He pointed.

Bucky looked down at the blood on his fingers and his brain slipped out of time a little bit – he didn’t remember how that had happened, and he hated not remembering. “What did I do?” It couldn’t be anything bad, or Steve would be trying to stop him, right?

“You were… you were picking at the skin on your back.”

“Oh.” He put his hand down in his lap and fought against a shrug. What was so bad about that? Maybe he couldn’t remember much, but… was it not just something everyone did? Or if not, wasn’t it just a bad habit? Perhaps Steve was just being over-sensitive because he didn’t used to do it – really, picking at his skin was the least of the things that had changed about Bucky, but Steve did have a habit of being most upset by the inconsequential things.

 

Steve didn’t mention it for a full week – Bucky didn’t know why; maybe he was still scared of pushing too hard – but once he mentioned it that second time, he kept mentioning it every day, and Bucky started noticing it more too.

It started around the sore edges of his arm, the parts that were chafed raw by the metal (he was proud that he could hazily remember this, as silly as it seemed), but by the time he had moved in with Steve, it had moved to his face and back. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t often; once a day for about half an hour, he’d pick at his skin.

It started at seven o’clock in the evening. He didn’t know what was so significant about that time, but something had to be. When he asked Steve, the man just shrugged and looked even more worried. Bucky decided not to bring it up anymore, and strived to stop; Steve had already taken in New York’s most wanted, had already started talking Bucky through the nightmares and the dissociation and given him strategies to cope with his sometimes-patchy short-term memory – he didn’t need anything more to worry about.

The problem was, though, that stopping was difficult. Even when Steve pointed it out to him, even when he was watching the clock like a hawk – he’d zone out and find his hands bloody again. He just couldn’t stop.

It felt like a silly thing to have a panic attack about, and yet Bucky found himself sat in the bathroom (with the shower on, no less) trying to pull in breaths between sobs. It was just a stupid bad habit – why couldn’t he stop? For God’s sake, he’d stopped being a brainwashed weapon, and he couldn’t leave his skin alone? How was that possible? Sure, he still sometimes forgot where he was and who he was and what he was doing, forgot that he cared when people died because of him (because he killed them), forgot what it was to be anything but a tool for someone else to use… Steve always told him that that was all understandable, but it still grated on him that he couldn’t control his own head.

He could control it better on all that than this goddamn picking, though. He felt his hand dance along the seam between his flesh and the metal and laughed bitterly at the sting. He dug his fingers in, trying to pull at that bit of skin that was always irritating him – as soon as he could get his fingers under it and pull, it always got worse, just pulled more skin away from his flesh and made the whole debacle worse. He just wanted the skin gone; it didn’t hurt that… well, that it hurt. Usually he didn’t even notice it, but at times like this, at times when he was fully aware and fully desperate, the pain was an incentive. He deserved it. He deserved to feel as if he’d taken a cheese grater to his skin. Some days, he felt like he deserved to look as ugly as he was inside, and picking was the way to do that.

 

Steve came looking for him ten minutes later, once he’d just about got his breathing under control. Steve’s face dropped when he saw Bucky on the floor, and he immediately shut the shower off.

“Buck, you can have a bath…”

Bucky shook his head. “It isn’t that.”

Steve rubbed at his friend’s right arm lightly, presumably trying to ground him (they’d both learnt a lot of new words the past few months). “Then what is it?”

He just showed Steve his left hand – and he’d used his left hand this time, maybe because it wasn’t quite as adept at the small motor movements, or maybe because the look of blood on metal had always appealed to him more than the look of blood on skin (the skin could be anyone’s; the metal couldn’t) – and tried not to start crying again. “I can’t stop myself, Steve. I’ve tried. It doesn’t matter. It’s stupid, forget about it.”

“It isn’t stupid. Look, I wasn’t going to say anything – I didn’t want to make it a big deal if you didn’t see it as one – but I think this might just be another symptom, Buck. It isn’t your fault that you can’t stop it right now; these things take time."

Bucky was overwhelmed by the thought that that didn’t help at all, before he was rushing out of Steve’s apartment.

“Buck!”

He ignored it. He ignored everything. He just needed to get away. He needed to get rid of these damn betraying hands of his. He needed –

Mittens.

It was ridiculous, but maybe it’d remind him how much of a fucking idiot he already was. He smiled at the woman behind the market stall, hiding his left arm behind him (he’d spent the last seventy years as an assassin, how could he not remember to hide his damn arm??) and paying for the mittens.

He could see how hard Steve tried not to laugh when he returned with the neon pink mittens, and he appreciated the effort, but even the great and virtuous Captain America couldn’t avoid laughing at that ridiculous sight.

They worked, though. He put them on at six thirty every evening, and (most of the time) they stopped him picking. He’d occasionally pull them off without noticing, but Steve was good at coaxing him to put them back on, and the more he was able to control it, the less he needed to. He didn’t feel the urge to punish himself by picking when he picked (and how stupid a cycle had that been?), and, though the picking urge was still there and set his teeth on edge on a regular basis, he didn’t destroy himself because of it. So the mittens were a good thing, even if they did make Steve laugh (because they made Steve laugh). Now he just needed to find a way to get off New York’s most wanted list, and he’d be set.

Maybe he’d just take what he could get.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I'm terrible at titles so I took inspiration from Twenty One Pilot's new album.  
> (PSA: not all derma is self-harm, but some is)


End file.
